The Zane Grey Megapack

by Zane Grey

  Beyond these pastures stretched the range, and Jean saw the gray-green expanse speckled by thousands of cattle. The scene was inspiring. Jean’s brothers led him all around, meeting some of the herders and riders employed on the ranch, one of whom was a burly, grizzled man with eyes reddened and narrowed by much riding in wind and sun and dust. His name was Evans and he was father of the lad whom Jean had met near the village. Everts was busily skinning the calf that had been killed by the wolves. “See heah, y’u Jean Isbel,” said Everts, “it shore was aboot time y’u come home. We-all heahs y’u hev an eye fer tracks. Wal, mebbe y’u can kill Old Gray, the lofer thet did this job. He’s pulled down nine calves as’ yearlin’s this last two months thet I know of. An’ we’ve not hed the spring round-up.”

  Grass Valley widened to the southeast. Jean would have been backward about estimating the square miles in it. Yet it was not vast acreage so much as rich pasture that made it such a wonderful range. Several ranches lay along the western slope of this section. Jean was informed that open parks and swales, and little valleys nestling among the foothills, wherever there was water and grass, had been settled by ranchers. Every summer a few new families ventured in.

  Blaisdell struck Jean as being a lionlike type of Texan, both in his broad, bold face, his huge head with its upstanding tawny hair like a mane, and in the speech and force that betokened the nature of his heart. He was not as old as Jean’s father. He had a rolling voice, with the same drawling intonation characteristic of all Texans, and blue eyes that still held the fire of youth. Quite a marked contrast he presented to the lean, rangy, hard-jawed, intent-eyed men Jean had begun to accept as Texans.

  Blaisdell took time for a curious scrutiny and study of Jean, that, frank and kindly as it was, and evidently the adjustment of impressions gotten from hearsay, yet bespoke the attention of one used to judging men for himself, and in this particular case having reasons of his own for so doing.

  “Wal, you’re like your sister Ann,” said Blaisdell. “Which you may take as a compliment, young man. Both of you favor your mother. But you’re an Isbel. Back in Texas there are men who never wear a glove on their right hands, an’ shore I reckon if one of them met up with you sudden he’d think some graves had opened an’ he’d go for his gun.”

  Blaisdell’s laugh pealed out with deep, pleasant roll. Thus he planted in Jean’s sensitive mind a significant thought-provoking idea about the past-and-gone Isbels.

  His further remarks, likewise, were exceedingly interesting to Jean. The settling of the Tonto Basin by Texans was a subject often in dispute. His own father had been in the first party of adventurous pioneers who had traveled up from the south to cross over the Reno Pass of the Mazatzals into the Basin. “Newcomers from outside get impressions of the Tonto accordin’ to the first settlers they meet,” declared Blaisdell. “An’ shore it’s my belief these first impressions never change, just so strong they are! Wal, I’ve heard my father say there were men in his wagon train that got run out of Texas, but he swore he wasn’t one of them. So I reckon that sort of talk held good for twenty years, an’ for all the Texans who emigrated, except, of course, such notorious rustlers as Daggs an’ men of his ilk. Shore we’ve got some bad men heah. There’s no law. Possession used to mean more than it does now. Daggs an’ his Hash Knife Gang have begun to hold forth with a high hand. No small rancher can keep enough stock to pay for his labor.”

  At the time of which Blaisdell spoke there were not many sheepmen and cattlemen in the Tonto, considering its vast area. But these, on account of the extreme wildness of the broken country, were limited to the comparatively open Grass Valley and its adjacent environs. Naturally, as the inhabitants increased and stock raising grew in proportion the grazing and water rights became matters of extreme importance. Sheepmen ran their flocks up on the Rim in summer time and down into the Basin in winter time. A sheepman could throw a few thousand sheep round a cattleman’s ranch and ruin him. The range was free. It was as fair for sheepmen to graze their herds anywhere as it was for cattlemen. This of course did not apply to the few acres of cultivated ground that a rancher could call his own; but very few cattle could have been raised on such limited area. Blaisdell said that the sheepmen were unfair because they could have done just as well, though perhaps at more labor, by keeping to the ridges and leaving the open valley and little flats to the ranchers. Formerly there had been room enough for all; now the grazing ranges were being encroached upon by sheepmen newly come to the Tonto. To Blaisdell’s way of thinking the rustler menace was more serious than the sheeping-off of the range, for the simple reason that no cattleman knew exactly who the rustlers were and for the more complex and significant reason that the rustlers did not steal sheep.

  “Texas was overstocked with bad men an’ fine steers,” concluded Blaisdell. “Most of the first an’ some of the last have struck the Tonto. The sheepmen have now got distributin’ points for wool an’ sheep at Maricopa an’ Phoenix. They’re shore waxin’ strong an’ bold.”

  “Ahuh! … An’ what’s likely to come of this mess?” queried Jean.

  “Ask your dad,” replied Blaisdell.

  “I will. But I reckon I’d be obliged for your opinion.”

  “Wal, short an’ sweet it’s this: Texas cattlemen will never allow the range they stocked to be overrun by sheepmen.”

  “Who’s this man Greaves?” went on Jean. “Never run into anyone like him.”

  “Greaves is hard to figure. He’s a snaky customer in deals. But he seems to be good to the poor people ’round heah. Says he’s from Missouri. Ha-ha! He’s as much Texan as I am. He rode into the Tonto without even a pack to his name. An’ presently he builds his stone house an’ freights supplies in from Phoenix. Appears to buy an’ sell a good deal of stock. For a while it looked like he was steerin’ a middle course between cattlemen an’ sheepmen. Both sides made a rendezvous of his store, where he heard the grievances of each. Laterly he’s leanin’ to the sheepmen. Nobody has accused him of that yet. But it’s time some cattleman called his bluff.”

  “Of course there are honest an’ square sheepmen in the Basin?” queried Jean.

  “Yes, an’ some of them are not unreasonable. But the new fellows that dropped in on us the last few year—they’re the ones we’re goin’ to clash with.”

  “This—sheepman, Jorth?” went on Jean, in slow hesitation, as if compelled to ask what he would rather not learn.

  “Jorth must be the leader of this sheep faction that’s harryin’ us ranchers. He doesn’t make threats or roar around like some of them. But he goes on raisin’ an’ buyin’ more an’ more sheep. An’ his herders have been grazin’ down all around us this winter. Jorth’s got to be reckoned with.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Wal, I don’t know enough to talk aboot. Your dad never said so, but I think he an’ Jorth knew each other in Texas years ago. I never saw Jorth but once. That was in Greaves’s barroom. Your dad an’ Jorth met that day for the first time in this country. Wal, I’ve not known men for nothin’. They just stood stiff an’ looked at each other. Your dad was aboot to draw. But Jorth made no sign to throw a gun.”

  Jean saw the growing and weaving and thickening threads of a tangle that had already involved him. And the sudden pang of regret he sustained was not wholly because of sympathies with his own people.

  “The other day back up in the woods on the Rim I ran into a sheepman who said his name was Colter. Who is he?

  “Colter? Shore he’s a new one. What’d he look like?”

  Jean described Colter with a readiness that spoke volumes for the vividness of his impressions.

  “I don’t know him,” replied Blaisdell. “But that only goes to prove my contention—any fellow runnin’ wild in the woods can say he’s a sheepman.”

  “Colter surprised me by callin’ me by my name,” continued Jean. “Our little talk wasn’t exactly friendly. He said a lot about my bein’ sent for to run sheep herders out of the country.”

/>   “Shore that’s all over,” replied Blaisdell, seriously. “You’re a marked man already.”

  “What started such rumor?”

  “Shore you cain’t prove it by me. But it’s not taken as rumor. It’s got to the sheepmen as hard as bullets.”

  “Ahuh! That accunts for Colter’s seemin’ a little sore under the collar. Well, he said they were goin’ to run sheep over Grass Valley, an’ for me to take that hunch to my dad.”

  Blaisdell had his chair tilted back and his heavy boots against a post of the porch. Down he thumped. His neck corded with a sudden rush of blood and his eyes changed to blue fire.

  “The hell he did!” he ejaculated, in furious amaze.

  Jean gauged the brooding, rankling hurt of this old cattleman by his sudden break from the cool, easy Texan manner. Blaisdell cursed under his breath, swung his arms violently, as if to throw a last doubt or hope aside, and then relapsed to his former state. He laid a brown hand on Jean’s knee.

  “Two years ago I called the cards,” he said, quietly. “It means a Grass Valley war.”

  Not until late that afternoon did Jean’s father broach the subject uppermost in his mind. Then at an opportune moment he drew Jean away into the cedars out of sight.

  “Son, I shore hate to make your home-comin’ unhappy,” he said, with evidence of agitation, “but so help me God I have to do it!”

  “Dad, you called me Prodigal, an’ I reckon you were right. I’ve shirked my duty to you. I’m ready now to make up for it,” replied Jean, feelingly.

  “Wal, wal, shore thats fine-spoken, my boy…. Let’s set down heah an’ have a long talk. First off, what did Jim Blaisdell tell you?”

  Briefly Jean outlined the neighbor rancher’s conversation. Then Jean recounted his experience with Colter and concluded with Blaisdell’s reception of the sheepman’s threat. If Jean expected to see his father rise up like a lion in his wrath he made a huge mistake. This news of Colter and his talk never struck even a spark from Gaston Isbel.

  “Wal,” he began, thoughtfully, “reckon there are only two points in Jim’s talk I need touch on. There’s shore goin’ to be a Grass Valley war. An’ Jim’s idea of the cause of it seems to be pretty much the same as that of all the other cattlemen. It’ll go down a black blot on the history page of the Tonto Basin as a war between rival sheepmen an’ cattlemen. Same old fight over water an’ grass! … Jean, my son, that is wrong. It’ll not be a war between sheepmen an’ cattlemen. But a war of honest ranchers against rustlers maskin’ as sheep-raisers! … Mind you, I don’t belittle the trouble between sheepmen an’ cattlemen in Arizona. It’s real an’ it’s vital an’ it’s serious. It’ll take law an’ order to straighten out the grazin’ question. Some day the government will keep sheep off of cattle ranges…. So get things right in your mind, my son. You can trust your dad to tell the absolute truth. In this fight that’ll wipe out some of the Isbels—maybe all of them—you’re on the side of justice an’ right. Knowin’ that, a man can fight a hundred times harder than he who knows he is a liar an’ a thief.”

  The old rancher wiped his perspiring face and breathed slowly and deeply. Jean sensed in him the rise of a tremendous emotional strain. Wonderingly he watched the keen lined face. More than material worries were at the root of brooding, mounting thoughts in his father’s eyes.

  “Now next take what Jim said aboot your comin’ to chase these sheep-herders out of the valley…. Jean, I started that talk. I had my tricky reasons. I know these greaser sheep-herders an’ I know the respect Texans have for a gunman. Some say I bragged. Some say I’m an old fool in his dotage, ravin’ aboot a favorite son. But they are people who hate me an’ are afraid. True, son, I talked with a purpose, but shore I was mighty cold an’ steady when I did it. My feelin’ was that you’d do what I’d do if I were thirty years younger. No, I reckoned you’d do more. For I figured on your blood. Jean, you’re Indian, an’ Texas an’ French, an’ you’ve trained yourself in the Oregon woods. When you were only a boy, few marksmen I ever knew could beat you, an’ I never saw your equal for eye an’ ear, for trackin’ a hoss, for all the gifts that make a woodsman…. Wal, rememberin’ this an’ seein’ the trouble ahaid for the Isbels, I just broke out whenever I had a chance. I bragged before men I’d reason to believe would take my words deep. For instance, not long ago I missed some stock, an’, happenin’ into Greaves’s place one Saturday night, I shore talked loud. His barroom was full of men an’ some of them were in my black book. Greaves took my talk a little testy. He said. ‘Wal, Gass, mebbe you’re right aboot some of these cattle thieves livin’ among us, but ain’t they jest as liable to be some of your friends or relatives as Ted Meeker’s or mine or anyone around heah?’ That was where Greaves an’ me fell out. I yelled at him: ‘No, by God, they’re not! My record heah an’ that of my people is open. The least I can say for you, Greaves, an’ your crowd, is that your records fade away on dim trails.’ Then he said, nasty-like, ‘Wal, if you could work out all the dim trails in the Tonto you’d shore be surprised.’ An’ then I roared. Shore that was the chance I was lookin’ for. I swore the trails he hinted of would be tracked to the holes of the rustlers who made them. I told him I had sent for you an’ when you got heah these slippery, mysterious thieves, whoever they were, would shore have hell to pay. Greaves said he hoped so, but he was afraid I was partial to my Indian son. Then we had hot words. Blaisdell got between us. When I was leavin’ I took a partin’ fling at him. ‘Greaves, you ought to know the Isbels, considerin’ you’re from Texas. Maybe you’ve got reasons for throwin’ taunts at my claims for my son Jean. Yes, he’s got Indian in him an’ that’ll be the worse for the men who will have to meet him. I’m tellin’ you, Greaves, Jean Isbel is the black sheep of the family. If you ride down his record you’ll find he’s shore in line to be another Poggin, or Reddy Kingfisher, or Hardin’, or any of the Texas gunmen you ought to remember…. Greaves, there are men rubbin’ elbows with you right heah that my Indian son is goin’ to track down!’”

  Jean bent his head in stunned cognizance of the notoriety with which his father had chosen to affront any and all Tonto Basin men who were under the ban of his suspicion. What a terrible reputation and trust to have saddled upon him! Thrills and strange, heated sensations seemed to rush together inside Jean, forming a hot ball of fire that threatened to explode. A retreating self made feeble protests. He saw his own pale face going away from this older, grimmer man.

  “Son, if I could have looked forward to anythin’ but blood spillin’ I’d never have given you such a name to uphold,” continued the rancher. “What I’m goin’ to tell you now is my secret. My other sons an’ Ann have never heard it. Jim Blaisdell suspects there’s somethin’ strange, but he doesn’t know. I’ll shore never tell anyone else but you. An’ you must promise to keep my secret now an’ after I am gone.”

  “I promise,” said Jean.

  “Wal, an’ now to get it out,” began his father, breathing hard. His face twitched and his hands clenched. “The sheepman heah I have to reckon with is Lee Jorth, a lifelong enemy of mine. We were born in the same town, played together as children, an’ fought with each other as boys. We never got along together. An’ we both fell in love with the same girl. It was nip an’ tuck for a while. Ellen Sutton belonged to one of the old families of the South. She was a beauty, an’ much courted, an’ I reckon it was hard for her to choose. But I won her an’ we became engaged. Then the war broke out. I enlisted with my brother Jean. He advised me to marry Ellen before I left. But I would not. That was the blunder of my life. Soon after our partin’ her letters ceased to come. But I didn’t distrust her. That was a terrible time an’ all was confusion. Then I got crippled an’ put in a hospital. An’ in aboot a year I was sent back home.”

  At this juncture Jean refrained from further gaze at his father’s face.

  “Lee Jorth had gotten out of goin’ to war,” went on the rancher, in lower, thicker voice. “He’d married my sweetheart, Ellen…. I kn
ew the story long before I got well. He had run after her like a hound after a hare…. An’ Ellen married him. Wal, when I was able to get aboot I went to see Jorth an’ Ellen. I confronted them. I had to know why she had gone back on me. Lee Jorth hadn’t changed any with all his good fortune. He’d made Ellen believe in my dishonor. But, I reckon, lies or no lies, Ellen Sutton was faithless. In my absence he had won her away from me. An’ I saw that she loved him as she never had me. I reckon that killed all my generosity. If she’d been imposed upon an’ weaned away by his lies an’ had regretted me a little I’d have forgiven, perhaps. But she worshiped him. She was his slave. An’ I, wal, I learned what hate was.

  “The war ruined the Suttons, same as so many Southerners. Lee Jorth went in for raisin’ cattle. He’d gotten the Sutton range an’ after a few years he began to accumulate stock. In those days every cattleman was a little bit of a thief. Every cattleman drove in an’ branded calves he couldn’t swear was his. Wal, the Isbels were the strongest cattle raisers in that country. An’ I laid a trap for Lee Jorth, caught him in the act of brandin’ calves of mine I’d marked, an’ I proved him a thief. I made him a rustler. I ruined him. We met once. But Jorth was one Texan not strong on the draw, at least against an Isbel. He left the country. He had friends an’ relatives an’ they started him at stock raisin’ again. But he began to gamble an’ he got in with a shady crowd. He went from bad to worse an’ then he came back home. When I saw the change in proud, beautiful Ellen Sutton, an’ how she still worshiped Jorth, it shore drove me near mad between pity an’ hate…. Wal, I reckon in a Texan hate outlives any other feelin’. There came a strange turn of the wheel an’ my fortunes changed. Like most young bloods of the day, I drank an’ gambled. An’ one night I run across Jorth an’ a card-sharp friend. He fleeced me. We quarreled. Guns were thrown. I killed my man…. Aboot that period the Texas Rangers had come into existence…. An’, son, when I said I never was run out of Texas I wasn’t holdin’ to strict truth. I rode out on a hoss.